


let me recite to you the litany of despair

by takingyournarrative



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, The Buried Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), but not too much of it, except it's mostly pining, they just have an encounter with it yknow?, this is rlly just your standard coworkers-to-lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingyournarrative/pseuds/takingyournarrative
Summary: There was a voice in the Institute hallways. Strange, with an uneven cadence, but gentle. Gerry tried not to listen to it. The words it spoke were kind and lighthearted and for all his pretense of nonattachment, his chest ached. But he couldn’t help hearing, and it was soothing, and it came as a relief when he was waiting, worried and afraid, outside Gertrude Robinson’s door. He counted himself lucky that he didn’t know who the voice belonged to.And then, of course, he did.In which there is pining, a brief encounter with the Buried, and roughly more or less what the title says.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	let me recite to you the litany of despair

**Author's Note:**

> I think I started this in ... November? Honestly have no idea what I was going for.  
> Title from The Book of Disquiet ... skjghdjkfgdf I can't believe that's a sentence I'm typing ... feels like a weird place to get fanfic titles from

When Gerry Keay’s mother died, she did not leave and he was miserable. Then she faded for the first time, and thinking her ritual had failed he placed her book on a high shelf, opened the curtains of Pinhole Books, and bought seven lighters and a box of matches at a corner store down the street. There was a Leitner in the cabinet upstairs, and then there was a pile of ashes swirling down the drain, and the new life Gerry was building for himself had already begun. 

When he went downstairs Mary was waiting, still weak and bloodied and a shell, really — a fragment of what she had tried to become. It didn’t stop his heart freezing out of his chest, his lungs boiling over, the exultant grin dying on his lips. 

“Gerard,” she said, and he closed his eyes and felt sick. 

It was a long time before Gerry was free of her entirely, and whenever she appeared he did as she said — hating himself for it, but unable to refuse. He was afraid. And he had his small victories, when her form flickered, shriveled, collapsed into the bloodstained ruins of her skin — when she was gone for a day or three and he could hunt books up and down London and in the country beside, burning what he found. 

He promised himself when she was gone that he would form no attachments. His duty now that it was not to her was to atone for all the time he had spent following her orders; he would throw himself into the mouth of terror and come out singed and bleeding, and another book or another monster or another person like Mary Keay would be gone. It was dangerous, and he would do his damned best not to die, but he could not be followed by anyone. So Gerry Keay’s mother was dead, but because of what she had been he would never know a kinder love than her motherhood, such as it had been — he would never know anyone else at all. 

That was another thing; he had eyes stamped on every joint and knowledge of the fears etched into his every memory; he would not give the Eye the satisfaction of taking him. He would seek to discover nothing about the people he passed — would not allow himself to be distracted by a gentle smile or a flash of brightly-colored hair, the scar on the back of a stranger’s hand in the library, the worn patches on the peacoat of the woman on the train. He could not stop himself from seeing, but he could try not to look. 

And it was hard, harder than he had expected, because Gerry loved to look at people. Maybe he was an artist or maybe he was just a humanist, but it was beautiful, the strange sweet incongruencies and details of presentation, of form, that told you nothing and everything about a person’s life. He wanted to know everyone he passed — wanted to stop the tall girl in the coffeeshop and ask her where she got the ring she was fiddling with on a chain around her neck — wanted to ask the barista why he frowned slightly when he took her order and heard her name. 

Part of him feared it was the Beholding. Part of him hoped it was good, that there was something in him not entirely ruined for the rest of the stupid, ignorant world. Part of him didn’t care. He could never be among them, so what was the point in watching them, in seeing all their gentle, careless ignorance laid out before him, in wondering what it might be like to share in that?

So he collected and burned his books when Mary was gone, and tried to hide from her when she was there. He left London but she found him anyway and forced him back — he fled further the next time, over the Atlantic, with the same result — he burned fast through most of her money and as many books as he could find, and eventually he was stuck with cigarette smoke and headaches and eighty-odd tattoos in the bloodsoaked walls of Pinhole Books. 

Gertrude Robinson found him a week after he had gotten really desperate; he knew there was a Leitner to be hunting while Mary was away, but he had neither the means nor the energy to go after it. Bedridden, sick with himself, and exhausted, he barely summoned the strength to stagger to the front door and stare through the peephole at the elderly woman outside. She didn’t look dangerous, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. He opened the door a crack, asked her who she was and what she wanted.

“Gerard Keay?” she asked. He nodded. “My name is Gertrude Robinson. I work for the Magnus Institute, and I’d like to speak with you.”

“Fuck off,” said Gerry Keay, and moved to close the door.

Gertrude stuck a foot in the gap and fixed him with an attention that was impossible to ignore. “Please hear me out. I can help you with your mother.”

It took a great deal of convincing on Gertrude’s part for him to even allow her to examine the book; but he was terrified and desperate for any help he could get, and eventually he let her take it away to the Institute; and when he came by a week later she showed him Mary’s pages a singed and bloody wreck, and he cried to see it. 

And then what? He had no ordinary life to return to; all he knew was the knowledge and the search and the fire, the hooks of three or more entities lodged so deep in him even as he sought to destroy their aspects. Still he owed the world a debt. For every book he had brought to Mary he would burn one, for every incantation he had read for her he would follow a lead, track an avatar, leave another monster dead behind a drugstore or a school or a church. 

Gertrude needed his help, and with nowhere to go and a debt to pay, he gave it. Perhaps willingly, perhaps reluctantly — most days, Gerry wasn’t certain. It was enough to stave off sickness and grief and anger and loneliness by following the directives of a kinder instructor than Mary had been. And if Gertrude’s eyes occasionally flashed at him, if occasionally she said “really, Gerard,” and meant he had fucked up, badly — if he could read the disappointment and frustration in the lines of her face, the set of her mouth — he would do his best to ignore it. Because Gertrude Robinson was not Mary Keay, and she could handle herself, and she could help him. That was enough.

He did not like to dwell in the Institute. His tattoos itched — maybe not literally, but it was an itch nonetheless, a persistent  _ awareness  _ of the way he had marked himself amplified by the way it surrounded him there. When Gertrude needed his presence, he would be in and out as quickly as he could, keeping his head down and his eyes averted from the people in the halls. He didn’t want to see them — didn’t want to know them — didn’t want to look at their quiet faces and see his father, picture their eye sockets empty and bloody and staring blindly.

He kept to the less-frequented hallways, left through back doors, and managed never to know anyone and never to get attached.

Michael Shelley was eleven when his friend shouted at something in his bedroom doorway and reappeared without appearing, spoke to Michael like always, a steadfast companion without a voice. He felt sick, and when he went to his parents for help they answered without answering — he had had a friend to sleep over, and now he did not. 

He was twelve and Ryan was not gone, but he had not seen him in a year; he was thirteen and the idea of Ryan that stood at the threshold of his room some nights went away and didn’t come back; he was fifteen and he tried to forget.

He felt sick all the time, hated himself for being unable to forget a boy who hadn’t cared — or perhaps he had, but he wasn’t, so what he was didn’t matter in the end. Michael drew interlocking spirals on the corners of his notes and sometimes he talked to Ryan instead of himself, because it was nice to have company. He was alone but not terribly lonely; he lent pencils and fetched drinks and corrected homework and smiled at the children who would smile back and invite him to their houses, where he would sit at the edge of a group and wish he were by himself, because they all knew each other and didn’t know him, and he had never really known how to talk. It didn’t bother him, and they were kind; it was him who didn’t know how to engage. So he went home and read and sewed spirals into the hems of his jeans. 

When he was old enough he moved into the city and got a degree, and he still felt sick but he felt strong and in control for the first time in his life. He had tea in the cabinets and books on his shelves, a window that opened westward so he could watch the setting sun. It might have been school and it might have been the city and it might have just been the freedom of living by himself, but he believed — finally — that he was going to find answers. 

The Magnus Institute promised him just that, and he hated a little that he would go this far for closure on a friend that wasn’t when he was eleven — hated that he couldn’t let this lie any more than anything else — hated that he cared so deeply about this person who had barely given him the time of day when he was. He lied to himself and said it was curiosity, and not compassion, that brought him to this, and that was enough. 

Gertrude Robinson was kind, and frail, and Michael threw himself into helping her as he always did; he liked helping people, liked the feeling of setting a cup of tea on someone else’s desk, liked the shuffling of cast-off papers as he set them in order, liked the thanks he got, however rare or meager. It was good to be of use. His attention directed away from himself, the knots of other people’s problems in his hands, where he could unwork them and feel good about it and not have to think about his own. Easy enough to patch up other peoples’ fears and frights — harder when the threads of an issue were caught and tangled on his own mind. 

He’d helped Ryan with his homework. Hovered over double-sided sheets of math problems while Ryan stared at something that wasn’t on the wall. Let Ryan chatter with people he swore weren’t there while Michael bit his tongue and wrote a short story in a passable imitation of Ryan’s hand. Lied to his parents and said Ryan had been practicing lines for a play neither of them was in.

The sun set earlier as October came and faded into November, and Michael walked home with a flashlight and the lingering fear that every side alley might turn into a doorway, and he might see the concept of the shadow of Ryan leaning against the frame. He rubbed his thumb against his index finger and promised himself he was safe.

Michael was tired. He had worked himself into the ground without realizing or admitting it, and now he was falling apart. His eyes slipping shut over statements, his research patchy and unmotivated. Nothing sounded like the thing that had taken Ryan, and the fear that he had chosen wrong wrapped persistent fingers around his mind and squeezed. 

Everything had happened so fast. Ryan’s disappearance. The rest of primary school, passing in a blur of frustrated confusion. High school, late-night research when all his homework was done and put away, half-serious books on paranormal happenings littering his library history. University, his degree, the Institute. He couldn’t remember when or if he had made a single decision the entire time — where he had come from — what he had done to get here. 

He wasn’t unhappy. But he was afraid.

Life in his fingers like a ribbon, slick silk being pulled by someone behind him, running fast through his hands, too small to hold it.

He would think this; he would shake his head; he would return to his research with renewed vigor, because he was nothing if not able to work. 

Gertrude liked him. He thought she did, anyway — her half-smile when he laughed, nevermind the edge to her voice when she answered. He liked working for her. It was easy, and it wouldn’t be long, surely, before he had answers. The statements were interesting, if mostly questionable — and even then, Michael was not inclined toward disbelief. He was too familiar with it — or perhaps with its cousin, whatever it was that made his parents smile and nod when he said Ryan was gone,  _ not gone home, he’s  _ gone _ , he was here and now he’s just not  _ — too familiar with being brushed aside not to be inclined toward gravity.

But the statements were about the sky, or sleep, or something that borrowed someone else’s face; too many legs and too many wings and too many knives to choose the right one for the job. Sometimes there were doors, but they were closed or locked or empty, truly empty, empty without anyone in them who wasn’t. And Michael quietly, quietly began to despair.

He told himself it wouldn’t be so awful if he never found out what happened to Ryan. He could keep researching statements and following leads forever, and maybe if it always felt like he was searching he would never be disappointed at the lack of results. He and Ryan had stood in the playground and Ryan had called  _ hide and seek _ , and Michael had closed his eyes and counted to sixty-one. He had sought for half an hour without finding Ryan, and the bell had rung, and Ryan had appeared at his side moments later, grinning and poking him.  _ You never found me! _

It could happen again.

It could happen again, and Michael would be okay with that. He was good at looking, and Ryan was important.

There was a voice in the Institute hallways. Strange, with an uneven cadence, but gentle. Gerry tried not to listen to it. The words it spoke were kind and lighthearted and for all his pretense of nonattachment, his chest ached. But he couldn’t help hearing, and it was soothing, and it came as a relief when he was waiting, worried and afraid, outside Gertrude Robinson’s door. He counted himself lucky that he didn’t know who the voice belonged to. 

And then, of course, he did. 

Really, it had only been a matter of time. He looked down as the man passed and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard Gertrude say his name through the door. Tried not to notice blond curls in his peripheral vision. A soft sweater. Arms full of papers and a blue binder. 

He did not want to know this man, who he refused to think of as Michael. It would be selfish. This man whose name he would not think deserved better than knowing him.

Michael whose name he did not know smiled at him the next time they passed in the Institute hallway, and it was too late to look away, so Gerry smiled back. Michael had dimples, and too many freckles, and a gap between his front teeth. Michael tilted his head when he smiled. Gerry hated himself for noticing. He had always been too observant. 

Gerry slumped over a desk, sketching eyes on the corner of a report for Gertrude, kicking his feet against the legs of his chair because nobody was going to stop him. There were hands in his peripheral vision; the sound of china on wood; a lilting voice with a name he would not speak saying “I brought you tea — ah, I hope you don’t mind — Ms Robinson said I’d make myself useful and, uh, that you might be bored.”

“Oh. I— thank you, Michael.” He looked up, smiled on instinct. Michael’s eyes were wide. “ _ Fuck _ . Sorry, I — God, I’m sorry. I overheard your name a few weeks ago.” Gerry hated this, hated himself for being flustered. “I’m Gerry.”

Worse. Worse by far to introduce himself like that. The name he had reserved for friends he would  _ never _ have, the name he had come to think of as his own. He had handed it to this man like it was nothing, like it  _ belonged  _ to him, like he wasn’t a stranger who Gerry would never speak to again.

He was laughing — nervously, but it was a laugh. “Hi, Gerry. I, uh, I didn’t mean to seem disturbed. You surprised me. I’m — Michael — but you already know that. Uh, sorry to interrupt you. Is there anything else you need? Is the tea alright? I’m sorry, I didn’t know how you take it.” His laugh was like rain. Gerry’s name in his mouth was warm and sweet and he could not afford to be attached. Michael could not afford for Gerry to be attached. 

“No, I’m … set. Thanks again.” He could not force himself to sound cold, but he could ask Michael to leave, quiet and polite. They would not go together to buy drinks; he would not ask Michael why he rubbed his thumb against his index finger; he would not tell Michael how he took his tea. 

“Alright, uh … good to meet you.”

And he was gone. 

And Gerry sighed and drew another eye and did not drink his tea. 

It was impossible, now, not to notice one another. Michael was eager to help, overflowing with something like kindness that might have just been desperation when it came down to it. And Gerry saw him, saw him whether he liked to or not, saw his hands were elegant and his eyes were grey and his glasses were round and always a little smudged. 

Only a matter of time, then, before one of them said something — they both knew it, but before Michael had a chance to invite him for drinks and Gerry had a chance to turn him down and ache, Gertrude Robinson forced them out together. 

A series of events just outside the city. Whether a book was involved, Gertrude was uncertain, but she would not send Michael alone. “I want him alive, Gerard. And the book burned too, if there is one. And  _ as few people dead as possible _ .” And Gerry nodded and sighed and resigned himself to Michael, sweet outgoing Michael, in danger and under his protection.

“I’m not incompetent,” said Michael on the train. “I’m sorry if Ms Robinson gave you that impression. You won’t need to worry about protecting me — I can take care of myself. Not that I don’t appreciate it! But — you know — I just —” 

“You’re fine. I understand.”

Gerry leaned his head against the window and watched concrete give way to grass and sky. He was  _ lonely _ , and it was unfamiliar and unwelcome. Michael was next to him and Michael was chattering away, hesitant and apologetic, and Gerry could not answer — would not answer — it made no difference. Gerry was accustomed to living without company — or at least, without  _ pleasant  _ company — but having to actively deny himself the chance at friendship was sickening.

And Michael was not just kind but genuinely lovely, funny and bright and peculiarly open while saying very little about himself. He liked elm trees and lilacs, and he thought it would be interesting, doing field work for a change. He usually worked in research, and he liked that too, but it was always nice to try something new — and of course, he was willing to do whatever Ms Robinson needed. 

Gerry could not help smiling. It was too much to suppress; so sweet, the simple vulnerability with which Michael spoke. Unfairly endearing. And after a while, Gerry looked at him and forgot the way the city was turning to sparse woodland. His eyes were grey and his laugh was like rain and his glasses were round and smudged and his hands were elegant and he gestured when he talked. And to talk — to speak to him, and find him speaking back as though to talk to Gerry were the highest privilege he could enjoy — as though what Gerry said mattered at all — as though he  _ wanted  _ him to speak — it was dizzying. Mary’s house had been suffocated by silence save for her mutterings. Words belonged to books, and happiness like this belonged to nothing and no one at all.

The train stopped and the town was small, unassuming, but there was something low and heavy in the air. It was sick with stagnation and nothing moved. Michael was afraid. The old familiar nausea rose in his stomach and he pressed it down, watching the doorways, rubbing his index finger with his thumb. 

“Where d’you think we should start?” asked Gerry, and he shook himself. Important to stay alert. Gerry would not need to worry about him on top of everything else — on top of this cloying, crushing weight that was the  _ sky _ . The sky was not supposed to be like this.

“Well — Ms Robinson said the first reports of … unusual happenings came from a diner — uh, the  _ Crooked Cradle _ , I think.”

Gerry nodded. “Thanks. Okay. Where…?” he trailed off. 

“I’m not certain — I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Let’s find it.”

The sky was cloudless, sunless, bruised purple, and the houses were grey. Everything felt washed out, frozen; nothing fluttered on the sidewalk, no curtains twitched; the broken neon lights were still, so still, with none of the pulse and flicker they should rightly have had. Nothing moved forward here. There was no direction at all.

Michael wanted to hold on to something, but the only thing in this place that didn’t frighten him was Gerry. “Are you doing alright?” Instinct. But a good one, he thought, especially now.

“Fine. You?”

He nodded. It was a lie.

The diner was too quiet. Too orderly. The people in it did not talk — they barely ate. And there was no blood, and no monster, and nothing  _ really  _ seemed wrong — just a quiet Tuesday afternoon, maybe. 

Of course not. They knew better, and the people watched them from the booths with something that might have been distrust and might have been disinterest. 

Gerry was suddenly very close, pressed against Michael’s side, breathing words directly into his ear. “Michael. Their feet.”

Slowly — scanning first the walls, then the faces of a couple of idle customers, trying desperately to appear nonchalant, designless — Michael looked down. They were fused to the floor; ankles vanishing into polished tile, muscles twitching as though they were still trying to get free. But their faces so  _ calm  _ — like nothing, nothing was wrong and nothing ever had been, like they were content to stay here and be trapped —

Michael did not reach for Gerry’s arm, would not allow himself to be weak and afraid here too. “What do we do?”

But Gerry had already moved on; he was standing at the counter, trying to speak to the woman behind it. Michael hurried up behind him — her eyes were quiet, heavy-lidded, and she nodded at Gerry, answered all of his questions in a voice leaden with exhaustion. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had been  _ started _ . What did he mean. What was he doing.

“Don’t come around there,” she said when Gerry started for the door behind the counter. “He won’t like it.”

“Who?” asked Gerry, and frustration was audible in his voice. “Michael, come here.”

Michael followed him, not even daring to ask whether he was certain. His face was steady, focused — an intensity that Michael had not seen in him before, different from the way he sometimes fixated on a wall or a window and did not speak. It was — alluring, somehow, the unsupressable force of determination. Michael felt safe and did not think he could say the same for the others in Gerry’s line of sight. 

Behind the counter was a curtain, which Gerry shoved past all at once. They came out in the kitchen, where the machinery did not move, and food was laid out ready on the flat surfaces.

“God damn it,” said someone who was perched on top of one of the stoves. “The Archivist should  _ really  _ have kept to herself this time. I’m not even doing any  _ harm _ .” It was not a pleasant voice. A drawl, a whine — a stubborn, uncompromising voice. Whoever was speaking would not be reasoned with, and Michael had very little without reasoning.

“I don’t work for the Archivist,” said Gerry, and it was really a lie save for his lack of a contract, but lies of omission in Michael’s experience were a boon.

“I don’t care. Leave me alone. They  _ want  _ to be like this.” 

Gerry pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, and Michael watched the eye on his outer wrist crumple with the angle of the joint. He looked stressed, and Michael was worried. Michael was always worried.

And Michael felt  _ pointless _ . There was nothing to say, nothing he could possibly do that would help Gerry. He was a hindrance and a liability.

He would be more so if he dwelt on it, and pressing his thumb hard against his fingers he stepped forward, took Gerry’s hand away from his face, and smiled at him.

“They want it,” he said, doing his best to sound convincing, hating the shake in his voice. “So why don’t we … get him to teach us … about the book?”

It was an unconvincing lie, and the man sitting on the stove laughed a low, unpleasant laugh and shook his head slowly. “Please, little fool. I can  _ taste  _ the Institute on the air. The book is mine; run along, now.”

Sickness tugged at Michael’s stomach and he frowned, searching Gerry’s face for disappointment, regret, frustration. He saw none; just that same focused intensity, like the man and the book were a puzzle he was trying to figure out how to separate. He was still holding Michael’s hand, and it was impossible to tell whether he had forgotten to let go, or whether it was a source of comfort. 

Finally, Gerry looked at Michael and raised a single eyebrow. “Let’s go,” he said. 

“Sorry, what?”

“Let’s just … leave.”

He turned Michael around and walked with him, but there was something in his gait, something in the way his fingers tightened on Michael’s hand, that seemed wrong. They weren’t leaving. The man with the book was calling after them, and Gerry’s pace quickened just slightly. “Trust me,” he muttered, and Michael did not look at him but it sounded like his lips were barely moving.

And then nothing was moving. They were no longer walking forward — stuck in place. Michael was moving his legs but they were not responding, and then the sound of something heavy landing on the tile floor and slow footsteps drawing close made him forget to try. 

“Oh, no,” drawled the man. “ _ Please _ . You don’t want to leave. Not really.”

Michael wanted to look at Gerry for guidance but he could not — he wasn’t certain whether it was fear or the same force binding his legs that kept him looking straight ahead, even as their captor’s silhouette appeared in his peripheral vision and moved — agonizingly — in front of them.

“What’s the point in  _ going  _ anywhere? Stay. Do you even have the means to leave? How did you get here, little watchers? By the train? Who knows when it’ll be back? Who’s to say I won’t take your pretty tickets out of your pockets right here and now? Who’s to say you won’t  _ want _ me to?”

Michael hated it. He felt helpless, and it was an awful feeling, and he wanted it gone.

“Look,” said the man, and he opened the book. Flipped through it, leisurely, until he found a page. Turned it around and held it out toward them.

It was packed tight with words. 

“Can’t read it,” said Gerry, and Michael was surprised to hear him speak. He couldn’t, or maybe he didn’t dare to try. But the man was lifting the book higher, holding it closer to Gerry’s face. His knuckles were white where he gripped the pages, and if Gerry was trying to get him close enough to grab it, Michael thought it would be difficult with him holding on like that.

“Interesting,” said Gerry. “I’m definitely — interested.” He sounded distracted. Michael knew how Gerry sounded when he was distracted, and the thing in his voice now was not interest.

All at once there was a scraping sound — the striking of a match — and Michael saw Gerry’s hand dart forward out of the corner of his eye, something bright and flickering catching on the corner of the man’s shirt. He stumbled, clutched at the book and moved backward as though he could flee the flames already clinging to him. His concentration broke — Michael felt it in the hot dry snap of motion returning to his legs, saw it in the way Gerry sprang into animation, caught at the man’s wrists and wrestled the book out of his hands.

Their assailant stumbled, hit the ground with a crack, and Gerry kicked him squarely in the ribs to keep him down. “I’ll bury you, or something,” he muttered, and, already working the pages of the book out in his hands, turned back to Michael. “Properly, this time. Let’s get out of here.”

The man on the floor was shouting obscenities at them, and Michael didn’t have time to care.

Gerry led the way back out into the diner, where the people were still slow and motionless and uncaring. Out into the street, where they darted across the street and collapsed in a side-alley, catching their breath.

“I think — if I can burn this, that’ll fix it. Usually does. I’m sorry about that; you — you did great. Can you get the bottle out of my satchel? I don’t really want to take my eyes off …  _ this  _ right now.”

Michael nodded, still too shaky to reply, and fumbled in Gerry’s bag for a plain black bottle, unlabelled but smelling strongly of gasoline. “Do you just — carry gasoline around, Gerry?”

“I burn things a lot. Thanks.” 

In a few minutes the book was alight, and the flames grew brighter with the sky, bruised purple fading to something like a dull periwinkle. It was nice. Michael sighed and leaned back against the wall. “The guy in the diner?” 

“Right,” Gerry sighed. “I guess we should go back for him. If he hasn’t … fucking burned to death by now.” He looked unhappy with the prospect. “I don’t think — it shouldn’t have been enough to kill him, right? I just — I just wanted to singe him badly enough to startle him. God, though, I’m sorry. What you must think of me—”

“I think I’m glad you were there so we didn’t both die,” said Michael. “Don’t you worry about me. Let’s go check on our man.” 

Their man, as it turned out, was badly singed but breathing, and Gerry shrugged. “He probably can’t do much without the book. Won’t be a cultist, and on their own … he’d derive power from the book. C’mon, let’s go.” He smiled at Michael, and forgot to hate himself for it.

Michael was quiet on the train home, and Gerry, because he could not help it, was worried. It was too late now not to be attached — standing in the kitchen he had been acutely aware of Michael at his side, Michael’s curls lit gold at the corner of his vision, Michael’s breathing coming slow and labored, fearful. And Michael’s hand in his — he had not been certain at the time whether he was reassuring or being reassured, but now, fisting and unfisting his hand in his lap, he was certain it had been the latter. It had been  _ so long  _ since he had been touched.

Michael’s hands were soft. His fingers long and with a kind of dexterous strength to them — 

Gerry did his best to take his mind off these thoughts, but there was nothing better to focus on in the present moment. He had insisted Michael take the window seat on the train ride home, and reluctantly he had accepted; now he sat staring blankly out the window, twisting his hands together in his lap. Concern was hot and angry in Gerry’s stomach and he hated himself for it, the instinct to do right by people magnified in Michael’s case because he liked him, and worse, because he was sure he was the cause of Michael’s distress.

Michael. Quiet, peaceful Michael. And Gerry had set someone on fire with him immobile, watching. It was unconscionable. There had to have been a better way — he had been trying so hard, for so long, to be better, and here was Michael making him realize he was nowhere close to good enough. 

_ You can always be better, Gerard. Particularly from where you are now.  _ He shook his head, as if he could dislodge the specter of Mary’s disapproval from wherever it had its claws in him. Of course he could not. She was haunting him still — less and less by degrees with every time something destroyed her, but present nonetheless. A mother, a book, a memory. 

“Michael? You alright?”

Michael started, pulled his gaze all at once from the window and fixed his eyes on Gerry, wide and blinking and clear gray. “I’m fine! Sorry, I didn’t mean to seem … distant. Just, uh, just tired, you know? I’ve never…”

“I’m sorry.” Gerry could barely hear himself, the apology muffled by shame.

“Whatever for?” Michael looked genuinely confused and more than a bit worried.

Gerry shook his head. “I dunno, just … God, I guess I just wish you hadn’t had to see that?”

Michael smiled at him, earnest and a little sad. “Please don’t worry! Ms Robinson sent me along, and like I said, I — I’m not a child. Uh, no offense. I just mean — I can handle myself. I’m not scared. Uh, sorry.” The apology at the end tacked on almost as an afterthought, an instinct.

“No, you’re fine. I don’t mean to underestimate you. I meant more — me. Just … don’t want you to think I’m some cold-blooded killer, or … anything.”

His eyes were even wider now, expression something almost akin to disbelief. “Don’t be silly! I trust you. You did what you had to. Besides, I got the impression that he wanted to kill us.” He trailed off into genuine giggles at that, and Gerry couldn’t tell whether he was smiling more from relief or fondness. The simplicity with which he had said that —  _ I trust you  _ — like it was easy, like it was natural, like there was so little reason to second-guess himself that he almost didn’t know what he was saying. It sounded like instinct, in Michael’s voice. If Gerry had ever had that kind of instinct it had been violently torn from him quite some time ago. 

“Well. Thanks.”

“Of course! Uh, say, do you want to go for coffee sometime? Not — I’m not making a move on you, sorry, but, you know. As friends?” He was blushing furiously, and Gerry felt heat in his own face as well as an uncomfortable awareness of his stomach sinking at the clarification. He was disappointed.  _ God, fuck _ .

“I — maybe? Schedule’s a bit … unpredictable.” He waved a hand vaguely, hating himself, watching his movements and listening to his words from some panicked place in his head where he could not stop himself from trying to shut Michael down — gently, yes, but surely. He would reschedule and postpone until Michael lost interest, and it would be good for Michael and he would forget, in time, that he had ever wanted anything else. 

Anything other than Michael smiling at him, silhouetted by the sun setting outside the windows of the train. Michael nodding, and saying  _ don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll work it out.  _ Michael’s gap-toothed grin and dimples and hair lit electric in the golden light. 

Gerry forced a smile and a nod, and let Michael carry the conversation along. He could at least do him the favor of being a decent companion — just for now.

Michael Shelley, however, had not felt sick since Gerry Keay had lit a man on fire and saved both their skins, and was not going to allow him to drop the subject of a coffee date that was not a date so easily. He saw Gerry — closed off and nervous, so ready to fight but so unwilling to speak. He wanted, more than anything, to help. 

Gerry was a purpose. Gerry was a means and an end and Michael, if he allowed it, could be the same for him. 

And Gerry was good. Michael trusted Gerry, trusted his uncharacteristically soft eyes, the way his fingers were thin and scarred but firm in Michael’s hand, the quickness of his mind. He was easy to put faith in, and though Michael had never been careful about where he put his faith he was quite certain he was not misguided in this. 

He took to seeking Gerry out, asking Ms Robinson when and where he would be in. She answered always with a wry smile and did not stop him when he asked to bring Gerry tea, to help him burn a book, to provide him with background for a hunt. She would not, as a rule, allow Michael to go on the hunts; and it was difficult to tell whether she really needed him in the Archives, or if Gerry had intervened to keep him out of danger.

Too often, Gerry returned from his trips bleeding badly, and Michael was sure he only showed up at the Institute about half the time. He would apologize profusely, stumbling to the back room where the cot and the bandages were stored, trying in vain to wave away Michael’s offers of help.

In the end, he always conceded, and let Michael support him to the cot, sit him down and bandage his arm or leg or torso, wash him clean of blood as best he could with clean rags and the sink in the corner. 

Gerry was scarred. Long cuts, slashes in the muscle of his limbs; burns upon burns, smooth red and white skin a little tougher than the rest but sore to the touch. Michael was careful with him; Michael was always careful, with everything, but particularly so with Gerry. It dizzied him, how much Gerry had come to matter to him, how much he craved the sight of Gerry’s thankful smile, lopsided and just slightly regretful. And he loved the feeling of patching Gerry up — he would have sacrificed it in a second to avoid seeing Gerry wounded, but to treat his wounds and touch his skin so carefully felt like the highest honor. A trust, maybe, that he hardly deserved but that he tried so hard to make himself worthy of. Gerry would be safe with him.

And every time Gerry stumbled bleeding into the Institute and every time Michael leaned back and pronounced him taken care of, he would ask him for coffee. And Gerry would refuse, regretfully, reluctantly, and Michael would sigh and think  _ maybe next week _ .

He wanted to stop asking. The old nausea returned if he thought on it too long — he worried that Gerry hated him asking, and the fear surfaced that he was too much. Michael Shelley who threw himself at people, who was too much too fast in everything he did. 

And one day he did not ask. “All set,” he murmured, tying off the last bandage.

“Thank you,” said Gerry, and his smile was genuine, his eyes gentle.

“Anytime. I’ll see you around.”

Silence, for a moment. The usual offer ringing in the air, unspoken.

“Yeah. Thanks again, Michael.”

“You’re welcome.” And Michael stood and left and felt miserable, if not entirely useless.

There was relative peace for a while. Winter had come in cold and fast and everything felt stiff, frozen, unpotential. Michael would see Gerry occasionally passing through the halls of the Institute, overhear him talking in muffled voices with Gertrude behind closed doors, and watch him leave a few minutes later looking on-edge but somehow light. And then he saw less of him, and less still, until he hardly saw him at all. 

He asked Gertrude, once. It felt wrong — Gerry very clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and it felt like a violation to ask after him behind his back. He didn’t know why he cared. Gerry had never even been a friend, really, much less someone close enough to fret for. But Michael had gotten caught on him, a stray thread on a thorn, and he felt like he was tearing.

“Gerard is fine, Michael,” said Gertrude, and he didn’t miss her raised eyebrow. “I haven’t had much for him to do. Things are … quiet.”

“Right. Thank you, Ms. Robinson. Uh … do you want some tea?”

She looked pointedly at the mug from earlier, still nearly full. Michael mumbled something again — an affirmation or an apology, and left, closing the door behind him. He did not ask about Gerry again.

Gerry Keay was lucky. Lucky, because he had never been particularly susceptible to the Lonely, and it had marked him deep enough to sting. He knew — without ever having put it into so many words, he  _ knew _ — that if the Lonely were going to take him, it would have swallowed him long ago. One of the long empty nights as a child in an upper room of Mary’s house, the memory of his father’s laughter still a solace, before he’d beaten every last ounce of comfort out of it and the recollection had faded. Or the long lonely years as a teenager, the brief attempts at running away, which had only reminded him how wrong he felt in the real world. The nights of cheap bus passes and dirty windows on the underground, smudges and flickering yellow light; one bled into another and the people on the seats around him were grey, dull, uninteresting. It might have had him after her death, during those months spent living with a ghost whose only company was to give him the next awful order. And then, quite simply, it could have claimed him in the moment when Michael Shelley looked up from bandaging his wound and did not ask him for coffee. 

But Gerry Keay was lucky. Gerry Keay knew the difference between being alone and being lonely, and he had never relied on the company of others for purpose or motivation or what little happiness he managed to eke out between one fire and the next. So when Michael Shelley stopped begging his company and Gertrude’s leads ran dry and Gerry was left to an almost entirely solitary December, he sighed and resigned himself to it.

There was little to do. It wasn’t only Gertude whose sources came back shrugging, whose searches drew blanks in every direction. The world had gone dormant. Apathy was a new emotion to Gerry, but he thought he managed it well enough. Sat in his window in fraying woollen socks and drew the patterns of ice on the panes, a faint sketch of the skyline. Lost himself, after a while, not in the world outside but in the things in his head, memories and horrors and blood and worms that he poured out on page after page until his skin was crawling but his mind felt clean. He burned the sketchbook and bought another.

Sometimes the cramped walls of the apartment got too much, and he fled to the park, which was bitter and almost entirely empty this time of year but the air felt good in his lungs, if icy, and he could let his mind unfocus and draw the fractals in the branches of the trees, over and over until he decided that was enough Spiral bullshit for a single day and left again. 

Other times he lay in bed with the sketchbook open beside him and did not touch it, because his hands itched to draw grey eyes and dimples in freckled cheeks and hair that spilled in ringlets over sloping shoulders. It was dark and the faint moving lights of the city that trickled through the blinds made shifting shadows on the ceiling, and he stared at them until he fell into a fitful sleep or grew hungry enough to get up.

He didn’t enjoy winter at the best of times. This year was particularly bad. He had thought things would get better when he moved out of Pinhole Books — didn’t sell it, didn’t burn it, just left and abandoned it to sink into disrepair — and they had, in some ways. The smell of blood that used to hang thick around her study was gone. The way the walls had leaned in heavy with books and no matter how many times he checked them, part of him had always, always worried that one was dangerous — that was gone. The choking dust that gathered too thick in the throat, which he was almost certain was left over from one of her botched Buried experiments, was only a memory, and the dust in the new apartment was clean and ordinary in comparison.

But it felt dull. Like the people on the street who looked at the world with half-eyes, who saw fog and thought of morning, who heard piping and thought of music. It was clean, white-walled, and he did not belong in it. He left ash stains on the floor and a heavier kind of dust in the corners. 

And he missed Michael Shelley. And he  _ hated  _ that he missed Michael Shelley. Because Michael Shelley was clean and bright and beautiful and Gerry did not belong near him. There was dust enough gathering in the Institute without Gerry adding more.

Spring came, reluctantly. It pushed itself out of the ground with an obvious effort, and the birds sang weakly, at first, in the trees. Still, it was spring. The air was warm again and Gerry left his coat behind when he made his way to the Institute for the first time in a month. He hadn’t had a call from Gertrude yet, and she’d told him to wait, but he was stagnating and he needed somewhere to be.

There were crocuses blooming in the circle of dirt surrounding one of the trees outside the building, and they looked horribly out of place, bright and soft against the marble façade of the Institute and everything it stood for, but the sight was welcome. He had always liked beautiful things, and he clung to that. One thing Mary hadn’t been able to take from him, no matter how ugly her world had gotten. 

Michael Shelley was standing in the library when he passed through it and he had never regretted his love for beauty more. He was taller than Gerry remembered — he knew he hadn’t grown, but the months apart had made Michael’s image fade in his mind, all the details becoming smaller, less than themselves. His hair less wild and bright; his face less soft; his hands less delicate and nimble, brushing over the bookshelves as though he might feel the title he was looking for.

Nothing about him was faded now. He was radiant, breathtaking, and his sweater had a stray thread hanging halfway to the floor and his hair was tumbling loose from his bun and one of the legs of his glasses had been wired back on with what looked like a bent paperclip.

Gerry was staring. He left quietly and Michael did not notice him.

Michael told himself he had adjusted to Gerry being gone. He missed the tread of his boots in the hallway, maybe, when some lighter footsteps passed by and fooled his heart for only a moment into skipping a beat. And too many times when he had wound down for the evening and should have been focusing only on a book and a cup of tea, he found his mind wandering to the feeling of Gerry’s wrist in his hand as he bandaged his forearm, or the way he had leaned ever so slightly into Michael’s touch when he was cleaning the wounds on his back.

Foolish things to miss. Besides, it had only been the illusion of help — he knew Gerry had seen and done more than he had by half, that Michael was unnecessary if not an outright annoyance. So he made tea to other peoples’ preferences and let the winter pass in the strange half-conscious way his winters usually did.

And when Spring broke and the familiar flowers nodded by the tree outside the Institute and he thought that he had finally stopped caring for another person who had darker things to chase, he saw Gerry again.

He looked tired. As lovely as always — a thought Michael had long since stopped trying to suppress — but exhausted.

“Gerry,” he said, before he could help himself.

Gerry looked up with an inhale that Michael could just barely hear and his face changed all at once: shock and something like fear and then a smile. Relief, maybe. It made no sense but Michael felt himself ache at it, and worse when Gerry returned his greeting in kind.

“Michael.”

“H— hi,” mumbled Michael. “How have you been?”

“Could be better. Could also be a whole lot worse.”

Michael laughed — not his usual giggle but a sharp, shuddering breath of agreement. “Me too.” He hesitated a moment. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” said Gerry. He was looking at a point somewhere to the left of Michael, biting his lip, and Michael wanted — suddenly, overwhelmingly — to kiss him.

He stood up from his desk and moved forward just slightly, watched Gerry’s eyes snap back to him and track his steps across the floor. He was beautiful, eyes dark in the shadows of the room and his hands frozen in a pantomime of surprise, raised slightly, tensed so that every tattoo was in sharp focus against his skin.

Michael felt himself starting to shake and cursed himself for it, rubbing his thumb against his index finger as though that could calm the tremors entirely. He didn’t know what he was doing — what he wanted to ask — how he would ask it.

“You’re very pretty,” he said, which was not a question.

“Michael,” said Gerry, and it sounded like a confession and a warning at once.

Michael took another step — and he was too much, and Gerry had made it very clear that he didn’t want him, and he was just waiting for a hand on his shoulder to push him away — and he could see faint freckles on the bridge of Gerry’s nose now, and smell smoke on his clothes, and he took his hands without thinking. They were calloused, the fingers slightly crooked, and Michael wanted them in his hair, wanted to kiss them, had rarely wanted anything this much.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, because there was no point in trying to pretend that wasn’t his intention.

Gerry took a deep breath, and his eyes closed and his makeup was flaking a little, black specks scattered across his cheekbone, and he nodded.

Michael should have been suspended, frozen in disbelief, but his heart was suddenly warm and he was smiling when he leaned in and pressed his lips against Gerry’s, just softly, still not convinced that this was anything more than a compromise, Gerry tolerating him because he was too much even to refuse. 

And Gerry was very still — kissing back, yes, but just barely, and Michael pulled away after a moment to ask if it was still alright. Gerry’s eyes fluttered open and he looked stricken, almost frightened, and Michael didn’t know what he had done to make him look like  _ that  _ but he hated it and let go of his hands like they had stung him.

“I’m sorry,” said Gerry, and his voice was choked, but he reached for Michael, caught at his arm before he could stumble back. They stood like that for a moment, Gerry looking at Michael and Michael glancing in confusion at the hand on his arm, until Gerry dropped it and brushed frantically at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “It’s — not you. At all. Sorry. Can I still —” he brought his hands to Michael’s face, holding it like it was fragile and important and beautiful.

“You don’t have to,” said Michael.

“Do you want me to?”

It was no good lying. He nodded.

“Yeah, me too,” whispered Gerry, and closed the space between them like striking a lighter or jumping from a precipice. He was kissing Michael and Michael was spinning free into some infinite colorful void, blushing certainly, and Gerry had let go of his face to throw his arms around his neck and bury a hand in his hair. Michael’s hands were on his hips and he didn’t remember putting them there but this was good, this was exactly what he had wanted and he didn’t in the least mind losing himself in it.

Slowly, unwillingly, Gerry pulled away, and Michael stood breathless for a moment. Gerry’s face was flushed and he was looking at Michael with the strangest expression — somewhere between relief and the same almost fearful alarm from before. Dark eyes and smudged lipstick and Michael raised a hand to his own lips, saw Gerry register the realization and begin to laugh.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for Michael’s hand. “Let’s go … make ourselves presentable or whatever before we talk this through.” 

Michael was still blushing and slightly dishevelled and he avoided Gerry’s eyes as he tore off a paper towel in the bathroom and turned to tend to the dark smudges on his mouth. His eyes met Gerry’s in the mirror and he raised an eyebrow — hesitant, but almost amused. “Are you going to…?” He gestured vaguely to his own mouth and Gerry saw himself blush again in the glass. He hastily stopped staring at Michael and made to clean up his own ruined lipstick.

He was stopped in his tracks by Michael catching gently at his arm.

“Here, let me.” In that soft voice. Michael’s hand under his chin, tilting his head up so carefully — and it was ridiculous, because they were in a public bathroom and Michael was cleaning his kiss-smudged face and he knew he looked a mess but it felt so nice to be tended to again, even in something as foolish and frivolous as this. And there was the same care in Michael’s attention as when he was cleaning or bandaging a wound and his fingertips were warm and soft where they touched Gerry’s face and his eyes fluttered closed and when Michael was finished he kissed him — just once, very softly — on the lips. Gerry remained standing that way — eyes closed, head tilted just slightly as Michael had held it — for a moment too long after he stepped away, until he heard Michael giggle and shook himself out of his reverie.

“I meant what I said about you being pretty,” said Michael through his laughter.

“I — thank you. You too,” said Gerry, and he almost cursed himself for sounding breathless. Still — there was no point in pretending he wasn’t, no point in disguising the vulnerability he had so clearly laid on the table for Michael to see.

There was no point in hiding it, but that didn’t stop the fear from curdling in his veins; the fear, and worse, the guilt. He had let himself break down. Let Michael — sweet, affectionate Michael Shelley — look at him soft and defenseless and open and now he would never see Gerry another way, and he would know Gerry loved him, and he would be in danger for the rest of his life.

He was already working at the Magnus Institute. That was the thought that Gerry had been pushing away — all winter? since the train? — and now it was inescapable, unavoidable, because it was the perfect excuse. He couldn’t bring on Michael a danger Michael had already thrown himself into head first. 

And yes, this meant the breaking of a wall he had never intended to be breakable. Yes, this meant that in spite of all his determination to isolate himself, to focus on undoing the damage Mary had pressed into the palms of his hands and never draw another person into the world he would never leave — despite all that, he would, in the end, fail this too, and gather Michael Shelley into his arms.

Michael Shelley was smiling at him and he was radiant against the cold tiles of the bathroom and Gerry crossed the space between them and put his hands on his face and kissed him, walked him backward until he was pressed against the sink and Gerry melted into the arms that wrapped around his waist and held him.

Fine, then. He would explain later. It was obvious that Michael knew little. He would explain later and for now he would kiss Michael until they had to stop. It was fine, and he would explain. Michael was soft and Gerry Keay was lucky and in love.

There was a lot to talk about. Michael knew it, and he knew Gerry knew it. Here, now, in the dusty archives with half a workday left to go didn’t seem the time. Gerry held his hand on their way back to Michael’s desk, left him with a kiss to his temple and a promise to meet him at the end of the day.

It was surprisingly easy to focus. Gerry Keay had shattered his every expectation, given him permission in very few words to be open, soft, overwhelmed and overwhelming. He had realized only in the moments before the kiss itself that he wanted this — he had known as soon as Gerry was holding him that he would want it again. So much, all at once, and Michael knew he should be shaken badly by the world turning so blindingly in his favor when he had all but given up on even being Gerry’s friend.

So it was hard to tell why Michael wasn’t distracted worse as the long few hours between their meeting and their reunion stretched out in a blur of research and half-plausible statements. He wanted to believe that it was because it felt natural, right — and he did feel comfortable with Gerry, safe and at ease — but things felt a long way from easy and a long way from right.

Michael knew, somewhere at the back of his mind, that there was a mess to work through. It had been a long silent winter and Gerry had looked so tired and had been so quiet even before, when they had seen each other regularly and sometimes talked. But all of that — the wreck that Michael knew they would have to untangle — seemed hushed, muffled with the memory of Gerry’s lips lingering on his brow and the promise that he would return. When it came time for the untangling, they would guide one another’s hands.

At the stroke of the clock Gerry was back, and Michael packed his things in a hurry and let Gerry pull him down to kiss him before they left. It was warm and the sun was still out, a relief after months of early dark, and they didn’t talk much on the walk back to Michael’s apartment. The silence was easy. They were used to it, and it had only grown comfortable since the last time they had waited in it.

Still, Michael’s nerves were setting in. The reality had begun to hit home that Gerry was there, and suddenly, adrift in his own home — half-drunk cups of tea and statements littering the table and a blanket thrown haphazardly over the arm of the couch — he felt uncertain and afraid. This was a deeper vulnerability than being kissed and it had been foolishness, really, to think  _ that  _ was the permission he had been waiting for. 

“I’ll make tea,” he mumbled, and nodded to the couch. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

Gerry smiled at him, and it looked like a reassurance, if a little strained. Logic said he was nervous too, and fear said he was already regretting that he had followed Michael home. 

“Uh — how do you take your tea?” asked Michael. It was strange. He’d made Gerry tea before, and he faintly remembered having asked once, but he didn’t know. He was certain he didn’t know, and certain he would remember if he did.

“With honey?” said Gerry. “And, uh, lemon, if you have it.” 

Michael nodded, and felt himself smile — this was familiar ground and something he knew himself to be good at. 

So Gerry had his tea, and Michael was clutching his own mug almost too tightly to register that it burned a little, and they were facing each other on his sofa and Michael had no idea what to say.

“I’m … sorry,” said Gerry.

“Whatever for?”

“I … a lot. Everything. I haven’t been — exactly great to you.”

It was news to Michael. Gerry had been quiet. Clear. Not particularly interested in him, but not unkind.

“There’s … a lot to go through? About me. About the Institute. My mother, too, she — fuck, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Take your time,” said Michael, and laid aside his mug. “Can I hold your hands?”

Gerry laughed, quiet and sweet and it made Michael’s heart warm. He reached for Michael’s hands and held them, idly tracing a thumb over the ridge of his knuckles. Gentle.

“I’m worried about you. About what’ll happen if — I made a deal with myself, a long time ago, not to … let anyone close to me.”

Michael giggled, and he knew he shouldn’t — Gerry looked serious, and Michael trusted him to be serious and to have good reason for anything he had decided. It wasn’t happy laughter, and he hoped that was clear. Sympathy and confusion and a bitter relief that it hadn’t been him driving Gerry away after all. “Sorry,” he said. “I, uh — I didn’t mean to — I’m not making light. I understand.”

Gerry shook his head. “You don’t, though. Don’t worry,” he added, and he must have seen Michael’s expression shift with the wave of guilt that filled him with. “But, yeah, there are things — that you haven’t been told. Gertrude, well … fuck.”

It took him a long time to put his words in order, and he rambled and backtracked trying to unfold everything he knew to Michael. It would have been a lot to take in — it was a lot to take in, but Gerry spoke softly, so patient and gentle that Michael could almost forget the words as he said them, let fear and horror be washed away in the tide of his voice. 

He never let go of Michael’s hands. Never failed to meet his eyes. Michael could see the effort honesty was costing him — not, he thought, because Gerry would have preferred to lie, but because he spared few details.

“So,” he said in the end. “You’re not exactly safe with me.”

Michael sighed. “I’ve never been safe, Gerry. You’ve put a name to things I’ve never been far away from, is all.”

And it was Michael’s turn, and his story was unravelled in Gerry’s lap and they sat with the disparate dark threads of each other’s pasts in a tangle between them, and Michael thought suddenly that if he were left alone now he might finally understand what it meant to be lonely.

“I’m sorry,” said Gerry. Whether it was an apology for Ryan, or for himself, or for both or something else entirely Michael didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.

“Me too,” he said. “But you’re fine. Are we — are we fine?”

Gerry let go of his hands at last and reached for him, cupped his face in both hands and regarded him in silence for a moment. “If we aren’t now, I will damn well make us be.” And Michael laughed and reached out in turn, and there was so much to think about but his attention could be nowhere but Gerry, wrapped in his arms and smiling into the crook of his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a very vague chance I'll end up writing a second part to this, but it's ... unlikely, as it stands, I have more fun things to write than the-closest-you-can-get-to-canon-with-gerrymichael. Please feel free to imagine that they find a lovely way to get Michael out of his Institute contract, or that he gets horrifically Spiralled trying to help Gertrude and Gerry almost kills him or possibly does -- whichever ending is most to your tastes of the myriad ways this could go from here :)


End file.
